However, when a person of ANY age points a gun at a Deputy Sheriff, Officer, or Trooper the ONLY option is deadly force. In this sad event the boy NOT the Deputy made the final choice to escalate the situation and it had deadly consequences. Consequences that tear, not only at the fragile fabric of the boy's family, but the local Sheriff's Office family, and the family of the Deputy Sheriff who fired the shot.
In the days following the shooting I heard multiple people, both civilians and reporters, asking why the Deputy had to kill the boy. Why couldn't the Deputy just wound him, shoot him in the leg or arm, or taser him. Folks, WAKE UP! If a person entered your home and pointed a gun at you, and you being a law abiding citizen had access to your gun, would you shoot to wound the intruder or to kill him?
As for a Taser, it can be a very useful piece of equipment and an effective intermediate weapon when used properly. However, NO ONE should expect a Law Enforcement Officer to take what amounts to a dart gun into a pistol fight. Have we become THAT afraid of lawsuits or of offending the sensibilites of some part, of some demographic, somewhere, that an Officer faced with a legitimate, articulable, Deadly Force situation who reasonably believes that his life or the life of your family member is in immediate danger should back down and lob a dart at the suspect in hopes that the suspect 1) won't shoot anyway, 2) won't accidently discharge the gun as his fingers twitch under the electric shock, or 3) won't avoid the taser shot and return fire on the Officer and those behind him.
PULEEESE !!!! A professional Law Enforcement Officer ALWAYS tries to avoid using Deadly Force unless absolutely neccessary. In this case, as in almost all others in recent memory, the descision to shoot is not made by the Officer, rather it is made BY THE SUSPECT when he/she chooses to point a weapon at a cop or a citizen.
The Deputy in this case has a long and distinguished history of service to his county. He takes his job very seriously and very personally. Most of all, and totally absent from ALL local coverage of the incident, is that he now must come to accept the fact that not only was he put in the difficult position of having a child at gun point, but all of his directions, pleadings, and attempts to bargain the weapon out of the child's hands were for nothing. This dedicated public servant protected all of the other students in harms way, put his own life and family on the line, but couldn't save the boy.
From personal experience I can state that if you could do it all again and keep the suspect alive most Officers would do so. The last thing an Officer wants to do is kill someone. However, sometimes Officers must step into the middle of ugly, rapidly evolving, dangerous situations and make that split-second descision to shoot or not shoot. All of us train, plan, practice, and hope to do the right thing when that terrible moment comes.
In this case, despite the pressure, the speed of the incident, and the armchair quarterbacking in the days that followed, that Deputy Sheriff, on that day, in that schoolyard, with that boy, not only did the right thing, he did the ONLY thing that could be done to stop the threat and protect himself and others.
A final note for those out there who would argue the point that the boy "only had a toy gun" so the Deputy should have known it was not real and had no reason to kill the child.....
you be the judge:
Does this look like a toy to you?
1 comment:
You are absolutely right. The officer did the only thing he could do to protect every other kid there as well as himself. It's a tragedy on every level. The biggest tragedy being that we live in a gun culture where a child thinks a feasible thing to do is to point a gun (fake or not) at other humans, and that there is no shortage of other Americans who blame law enforcement.
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